Transparency Talk Radio

The recent events in Utah -- where state legislators have rolled back decades of open government advances -- are the topic of our show airing during National Sunshine Week. We talk with Prof. Charles Davis, nationally known freedom of information expert, about what's happened in Utah.

The cat is out of the bag, and boy, it is a big, ugly cat: The Austin, Texas, City Council has been holding private meetings before the regular city council meetings to hash out their differences behind closed doors -- and using private e-mail accounts, private text messages and online chat programs to communicate in secret. Leading the way in reporting on this transparency tragedy is the Austin Bulldog. We'll talk with Bulldog editor Ken Martin about his reporting, the city's response and the Bulldog's lawsuit against the city alleging violations of state open government laws.

On this week's episode, we'll talk about the problems people face having to pay to get access to public information, including copying charges, labor and research time, overhead costs, programming costs and other such fees. Many in government wish they could charge more, but open government advocates (myself included) point out that the information is ours, not the government. We already paid for it -- why should we pay for it again?

Tune in for our next episode of Transparency Talk Radio, a live Internet radio show/podcast on open government.

Join us as Edwin Bender, executive director of the National Institute on Money in State Politics -- they're followthemoney.org -- talks with us about their work to make state-level campaign finance more transparent in all 50 states.

Join us as we talk about a wiki dedicated to open government issues, SunshineReview.org, with its senior editor.

With legislatures in many states convening or reconvening, Transparency Talk Radio discusses ways state lawmakers could improve transparency.

Let's talk about what we can do to improve government transparency this year.

Scott St. Clair of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation talks about his fight to get access to records pertaining to safety issues in Washington state's ferry system -- a fight that has drawn support from transparency advocates and other journalists across the nation.

Laura Frank, nationally known investigative reporter and executive director of Colorado-based I-News, will be our guest today. She'll talk about I-News' most recent investigation, which probed where e-waste -- recycled computers and the like -- really wind up, and how public records and public information figured into that investigation. Laura is a friend and former colleague of mine from The Tennessean, and I know you will enjoy hearing her talk.